This is an article by by STUART ELLIOTT from the New York Times that shows how 3d web is being used for education in the health insurance market.
This campaign from a giant insurance company seeks to school consumers on health care by offering them a chance to attend a virtual institution of higher learning with no campus, sports teams, classrooms or fight song.
Best of all, there will never be letters from the alumni office dunning graduates for donations.
The insurance company is Cigna, which has introduced Cigna University with an interactive “e-learning” curriculum. The program is part of a brand campaign that carries the theme “It’s time to feel better,” which provides the address for the educational Web site.
“We can’t fix the entire health system overnight,” say newspaper and magazine ads that are meant to help drive traffic to the Web site. “But we’re doing everything in our power to make it better for you.”
The curriculum on the Web site is also available on Facebook, flickr.com and YouTube and as podcasts on iTunes. It is composed of three courses: “Back to the Basics,” the equivalent of Health Insurance 101; “What’s Your Plan,” outlining the ins and outs of health care plans; and “Take Action Now,” examining the health care platforms of the Democratic and Republican Parties.
And since few universities are all work and no play, visitors to the Web site can try their luck at a game about issues related to health. As an incentive to play, Cigna is making donations to an organization called Water for People for each three questions that computer users answer correctly.
The brand campaign includes, in addition to the print ads, three television commercials, one of them 60 seconds long.
The shops collaborating on Cigna University are Doremus, an advertising agency owned by the Omnicom Group, and an Omnicom public relations agency, Fleishman-Hillard, along with the Fleishman-Hillard digital health care practice.
The budget to develop the online health courses and the game is estimated at $400,000. The “It’s time to feel better” campaign, which Cigna intends to run for several years, has a multimillion-dollar budget.
“One of our main objectives is for consumers to be empowered,” says Sheila McCormick, director for consumer education at the Chicago office of Cigna, adding that company executives “recognize it’s difficult for people to act if they don’t understand” how the health care system — and health insurance — work.
Research shows that “only 8 percent say they understand all they need to know about health care,” she adds, which is “worse than we thought.”
Ms. McCormick acknowledges the widespread skepticism — even cynicism — about efforts to improve health care in the United States as well as the health insurance system.
“The industry is not perceived as positively by consumers as we would like,” Ms. McCormick says, and as a result “it’s very difficult to engage people.”
To counter that, the courses “are not branded Cigna and the Cigna logo is not all over them,” she adds, to underline that the initiative is “not to sell product but to educate people”
Howard Sherman, president of Doremus in New York, says a goal is to “stake out a leadership position” for Cigna, which is beginning to “think of itself as less of a health insurer and more of a health service company.”
“It’s more about that service mentality,” he says of Cigna University, assisting “members and employers to more easily navigate what’s a pretty complex system and get the benefits they need when they need them.”
One way to do that, Mr. Sherman says, is by “moving away from the jargon of health care,” so the courses are presented in as straightforward a fashion as was possible.
For instance, the educational programs are in a section of the Web site labeled “Its time to know stuff.” A demonstration of claim processing appears as “The life of a claim” in a virtual theatre.
“This is very much about a company that recognizes it’s in its own best interests to change,” Mr. Sherman says, “to make it easier for employer customers and member customers.”
Part of making it easier is the widespread presence of the courses in the new media outlets like Facebook, iTunes and YouTube.
“It was a great opportunity to try a host of things we’ve never utilized before,” says Karen Kocher, chief learning officer at Cigna, who is also based in Chicago.
“It recognizes the way learning tends to permeate,” she adds.
Erin Enke, a managing supervisor at the Fleishman-Hillard office in New York specializing in digital health care public relations, says the game was included in the curriculum because such content tends to be “more sticky” — that is, encouraging computer users to stay on Web sites longer.
“If you’re playing the game and enjoy it,” Ms. Enke says, “it automatically updates your Facebook page to show you’ve been playing.”
The presence of Cigna University on Facebook and the other Web sites is “not just because we can use them,” she adds, but rather to enable those consumers who consider visits to those sites as integral parts of their daily routines to “become familiar with Cigna.”
So far, the strategy seems to be working. As of last week, a month into the campaign, Cigna tracked 52,500 visits to the courses and the game, according to a spokeswoman for the company, Gloria Barone Rosanio, and 85 percent of the traffic to the Web site had come from Facebook and other “online referrals” that included blog posts and online articles.
And the donations to Water for People that Cigna is making for correct answers to game questions reached more than 52,300 as of last week, meaning that game players had answered more than 150,000 questions correctly. (The game informs players that for each three questions they get right, a child in a developing country gets a day of clean water.)
Cigna has agreed to donate $50,000 to Water for People through the end of the year, Ms. McCormick says.
